


you shall know him by his manner

by Nakimochiku



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:06:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4707038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You close your eyes to sleep and do not expect to wake again.</p>
<p>When you do, you will find him again. And again after that, and after that too. You will keep finding him until you can keep him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you shall know him by his manner

**I**

You meet him in the Roman army. He is good on a horse, good with a sword, and he shows so much thigh beneath the kilt of his barbarian armor that your mouth waters for a taste. You either want to bite until you hit bone, or drag your lips so gently he gasps and worships you.

He is not trembling and shy, nor particularly boisterous. He drinks before he attempts to talk to pretty bar maids, he doesn't laugh at vulgar jokes but scoffs and ducks his head. He hates bloodshed, hates violence, and you like both. He dislikes you on principle.

It never bothered you until he started to speak of going home. He wants peace and ease. He wants to farm and marry, have a herd of children and die. You want none of these things, you just want him.

You would do anything to protect him.

When you die doing just that, selfish creature you know yourself to be, you think this is the most selfless thing you've ever done.

You close your eyes to sleep and do not expect to wake again.

**II**

You don't remember at all, until you meet him. Then it comes back to you all at once and you wonder why you have again met him on the battlefield.

This time, you haven't grown up with him, you don't know him the way you used to. This time, you are enemies. He is the enslaver and you are the resistance. But he still grimaces the way he always has as he levels a sword at you, one hand clasped to his side to staunch the bleeding of an arrow wound.

You have always admired his bravery, and admired his determination to do what is expected of him a little less.

You knock him out and drag him away, peel off his armour to inspect his wound. It is through the meat of his shoulder, and if you can cauterize it and stave off infection, he will live. You leave him to gather wood and herbs.

The battle rages on, but it's of no concern to you. Let them fight. Let them win or lose and die all the same. You have found him, and you realize abruptly, maybe you were always looking for him.

When you return to his side with the things you need, he is breathing his last with your cousin standing over him, sword still dripping blood.

You kill your cousin. You lick his blood from your cousin's blade, and close his wide open eyes. You will find him again.

**III**

You meet him on a raid. You are older than him by a decade or so, and the sea has beaten your face to leather. His is still soft and wide, well fed, well loved. You take him, because you can. It is your right.

He is sick the whole ride back, and when he isn't sick he trembles with his companions and prays. You've never considered him a god fearing man. You’ve never feared the gods yourself. You tell him so. You tell him there is nothing beyond this life. You do not tell him there is life and life and life again.

He looks you in the eye and keeps praying, defiant and spiteful.

You live with him as your slave for years. He fixes your meals and takes care of the house, he drives the sheep to pasture and brings them in again. He limps from the time you broke his leg when he tried to get away. It never healed properly. You've never been happier.

You grow ill one winter, you can't stop coughing and you can barely breathe. You've never died of the infirmity of old age before. He sits at your bedside and prays for you. You haven't breath enough to laugh at him. You haven't breath enough to tell him you will find him again. You haven't breath enough to set him free.

You die with his prayers in your ears.

**IV**

Jerusalem crouches like a child in the dark, as the ever turning gears of war bring the Christians closer. He is by your side on guard duty, helmet tipped back, mouth twisted in a grim line.

If you must meet on the battlefield, you are glad you are not opposing each other.

He is quiet and watchful. You are quiet and you watch him. He says nothing, and it has always been your job to break the silence, to peck at his skull like a buzzard and find his brains, examine his scattered thoughts. You say nothing at all tonight.

In the morning the Christians will attack the city. You will defend it. You will not do it for any god, for any sense of right or wrong. You will do it because you love the music of mayhem and bloodshed, and because he is beside you, and beautiful with blood splashed up the side of his face, eyes blazing.

He is still good with a sword. That, and the displeased pull of his mouth as he wields it has stayed the same.

**V**

Your profession is to hold a warm, beating heart to the red dawn in offering, the sun god spilling blood across the sky in pleasure. It’s not that you care if the sun ever rose again, you just like the way rib cages give beneath your weapons, the way the prisoner thrashes and screams as you lift their heart free.

You can't tell if that, or kicking their lifeless bodies down the temple steps is you favourite part.

He waits for you on your altar, and several desires flush through you all at once. You could ask for a different sacrifice and set him free. You could damn everything and flee into the jungle with him.

You break apart his ribs, feel your way inside him while he screams. You take hold of his heart. You're glad that if it had to be done, it was done by you.

You hold his heart to the rising sun, his quickly cooling blood dripping down your forearm. You want to take a bite, want to hold the taste of him in your mouth and remember his flesh and his warmth.

You are the only one worthy of his life, you think as you push his body down the temple steps, trailing blood and viscera as he tumbles. You are the only one worthy of his death.

You take a bite of his heart when no one is looking.

**VI**

He comes to you while you are sharpening your blade in the garden, listening to the soothing clack of the bamboo pipe hitting the stone basin. He sits down in a swish of silk, his layers of finery heavy and warm beside you.

Decorum says you should bow. You've both dispensed with decorum tonight. You have served him too long, and something is on his mind tonight. You keep sharpening your blade as you wait for him to speak.

There have been battles and skirmishes across the country, warlords vying for power beneath the tyrannical but waning shogunate. There has been unrest in this very province, and it weighs on his mind. He wants to do something, and is frustrated by his powerlessness.

You recite him a spontaneous haiku, and he smiles but does not reply with his own. Even his smiles looks weighted.

You can slice an enemy cleanly, you can shoot an arrow as far as the moon. But there is nothing you can do to unify a whole country.  There is nothing you can do to ease the tightness of his smile.

You realize, as you look at him in the moonlight, that you want to preserve him as he is right now. You do not want his blood and his suffering.

You wonder how you forgot that.

**VII** **  
**

He observes the docking ship from the cover of the trees. He thinks he is well hidden, technically he is. But you have gotten used to seeking out his presence over the years, centuries, lives. you can sense him.

Your first instinct is to take him. But you have tried that before and though the result was one of your better lives, you do not want to have to break his leg to keep him.

You want him to come to you, to want you.

The role reversal is strange; you are the prey and he is the hunter, and he will corner you and you will let him.

His people are friendly enough, watching the strange iron commodities the ship bears with jealous eyes and interested fingers, curiosity and greed welling up between them. He is utterly uninterested. You are caught between wishing you could tempt him close to you with a bauble, and feeling proud of his lifted chin and crossed arms, wary of the strangers.

You are not a threat to him, yet, just the way a shark is no threat to a school of fish when it isn't hunting. You think he smells that on you, as every prey animal smells predator. You could smile at the irony; so many lives, and at last he has learned not to trust you completely.

His people and the ship’s crew become allies. You give him a bell as a show of friendship. The children of his village clamber all over him to catch a glimpse of it. You want to tell him if he rings it you will come running. You want to take his face between your hands and kiss him.

You smile and call him friend. He means much more to you than that.

**VIII**

He is a philosopher, in his way. He listens to other speakers and makes faces at their points, but never offers insight of his own. You have tracked him down to this coffee house, have watched him in his corner as you sit in a corner of your own.

You don't know how to broach a conversation with him. You want to find the perfect thing to say to draw him in and trap him in the silk of your spider web. You have never considered yourself shy.

He seems to be the exception to every rule you have.

You go to stand beside him and drink strong coffee, smell his perfume and the damp wool of his coat. He wears his hair long and unpowdered. He is without the ostentation of the gentry.

You ask him why he finds the speakers so amusing. His reply is scathing and poetic, reminding you of his spontaneous haikus (how many lifetimes ago? You can't recall); you are glad to see he still holds some skill in that regard. You must say something witty, because he laughs and looks at you, turns to you fully, eyes sparking.

In a thousand years, you cannot remember his laugh. You remember his tight smiles and his snorts and his rolling eyes, but you don't remember his laugh.

You are pleased with yourself.

**IX**

The nurses rush him in on a gurney while bombs drop all around you. His face is melted, but you recognize him. You can always recognize him. He is bleeding out, and you don't know which will kill him first, the fever of infection from his lost limbs, or the mustard gas.

He seizes and shakes and makes horrible dying noises from his raw and bleeding throat. There is no point trying to save him, it’s a waste of time and resources. Even if you could save him, he would never be able to see, speak or walk again, he’d be little better than a lump of flesh.

You don’t want that life for him.

You hold his remaining hand as he expires. You wonder if he even knows you are there. You promise him sunshine and blue birds and peace in a soothing voice over and over. Next life time. You will find him next time. You tell him it is alright to die.

He wheezes and falls limp, and you kiss his forehead.

You do not cry.

**X**

You will move slowly and carefully. You will draw him to you so subtly, inch by inch, until he's so deep he does not remember a life without you.

This time his name is Will Graham. He is straddling some strange border between delicately infirm and savagely strong. You have never found him more beautiful.

You are allowed to touch him, so you do. You pet his face and his curls and his shoulders. You are tempted to take his face in your hands and stroke your thumbs over sharp lines of his cheeks and let your lips meet. You will wait for the right moment.

You've tasted his blood and his heart, you've killed him and you've saved him in turns. You've broken his leg, his fingers, his ribs. If you kill him this time, you want it to be poetic.

If he kills you, you want him to feel it in his bones.

He wants a family, you make him one. He wants stability, you give him that too. He wants to always know where you are, so you give yourself up.

You wish you had kissed him so he would look at your lips behind the glass of your cell and remember the taste of your mouth.

You will kiss him so that he can never forget. Not in this lifetime or any other.


End file.
